Turing's Tofu #12

Google's AI Search Shift, Marketing Teardown of Loops , & New AI Unboxed Episode

Originally publish on 3/24/24: https://turingstofu.beehiiv.com/p/turings-tofu-12

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Turing's TOFU: AI-Driven SaaS Growth

Curated by Andrew Mounier

Welcome to the latest edition of Turing's TOFU, where innovation intersects with the pulse of AI and SaaS. This week, we're dissecting Google's strategic reshuffle to bolster AI search capabilities, Stability AI's groundbreaking Stable Video 3D technology, YouTube's new mandate for AI-generated content labeling, and Under Armour's AI-crafted sports commercial that's stirring the pot.

"AI Unboxed" features Episode 106: "Empowering Sales Teams with Revenue Insights," where we speak with Isaac Pohl-Zaretsky, CTO and Co-founder of Pocus.

For those craving practical marketing wisdom, "TOFU Quick Bytes" presents a strategic breakdown of Loops, revealing how this Y Combinator-backed platform is simplifying email marketing for SaaS companies.

Prepare to be enlightened, educated, and inspired as we navigate through the evolving landscapes of AI, SaaS, and marketing innovation. Let’s dive in!

???This Week in AI & SaaS ??

• Google has changed its Search team, to ramp up advancement in AI search products, after an influx of AI-powered search engines—such as Perplexity—have entered the market, challenging Google’s more traditional online search methods. Read more.
• AI start-up—Stability AI—has released Stable Video 3D (already available for commercial use) which can transform 2D images into moving 3D videos, and is ideal for e-commerce, retail, and gaming. Read more.
• To prevent disinformation, YouTube content creators must now issue their AI-generated videos with an ‘altered or synthetic content’ label, otherwise, they could risk account suspension or demonetization. Read more.
• Sports brand ‘Under Armour’ released the first-ever AI-generated sports commercial last week. Although it caused controversy as it uses footage created by other artists, without their permission, it is impressive.?Watch it

??Turing’s Top Picks ??

FEATURED TOOL?

• Lede: Lede uses AI to summarize Reddit posts and comments which allows you to create content for your blog, newsletter, or social media channels, in seconds. Try it.?
• Swipe Insight: Swipe uses AI to summarize insights based on your marketing objectives, allowing you to stay on top of top trends, and the latest industry news, and strategies.? Try it.

Read of the Week:?

The Man Behind Google Brain–Andrew Ng–Gives His Opinion on the AI Hype

I can’t prove that AI won’t kill us all…but I don’t see how AI could lead to human extinction. - Andrew Ng

In this interview with the Financial Times, key AI industry influencer–Andrew Ng–gives his opinion on all that’s happening in the world of AI, from AI regulations to the threat that AI brings to human existence. Read it.

??? AI Unboxed Podcast????

In this week's episode of AI Unboxed, Episode 106: "Empowering Sales Teams with Revenue Insights," we dive deep with Isaac Pohl-Zaretsky , the tech-savvy CTO and Co-Founder of Pocus . Isaac's journey from gaming platform guru to pioneering the AI-driven future of B2B SaaS is nothing short of inspiring.

We explore how Pocus is revolutionizing the way businesses harness AI to transform data into tangible revenue, offering invaluable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business leaders alike. Don't miss Isaac's forward-looking perspective on AI's evolving role in entrepreneurship.

Click below uncover the secrets to leveraging AI for sales success and gain insights into the revenue-boosting strategies of tomorrow. Watch now!

???TOFU Quick Bytes: Loops Teardown ??

Loops teardown

Launched in 2022, Loops is a SaaS, Y Combinator-backed, email marketing platform–designed to simplify the email experience for SaaS companies–that automates the process of creating and sending onboarding, retention, and re-engagement marketing emails.

Strategy overview: Loops targets early-stage B2B SaaS companies and offer unlimited team seats, so the product can grow with the team, allowing them to collaborate and align on all aspects of emails–from copy to the mailing infrastructure. They differentiate themselves by pushing messaging about their bespoke editor, which they built, from the ground up, specifically for SaaS companies, including features like mobile editing, dark mode settings (who doesn’t love dark mode!), and API integrations.

Performance Analysis:

• In the year it launched (2022) Loops made $450K in revenue with a team of 3 people?
• They managed to raise $3.2 million in funding, including investment from Dropbox and Codecademy
• They get 196,062 monthly website visits, with an average growth rate of 164.93%??
• Thousands of SaaS companies use Loops, including tech start-ups, Stability AIi and Perplexity??

How have they achieved this??

Critical Teardown:

What does Loops do well?

They’re big on adding value by addressing common email-deliverability issues, like SPAM, head-on. They educate their users on common SPAM issues to look out for, automatically add compliant footers to all emails, actively monitor the platform to make sure it’s never used for SPAM (ie. they don’t allow cold sales emails), and have a deliverability tool that allows users to check for emails for deliverability issues before they press send.??

They’re big on transparency, from sharing details about how they work–via their publicly available Wiki page–to their clear and simple pricing information, which is easy to find (in the main navigation) and contains specific pricing-related FAQs. This openness instantly builds trust with users.

They’re big on social media and stay active on X (formerly Twitter), especially, with Loops founder, Chris Frantz posting engaging content–which isn’t always directly related to Loops–most days, which helps them stay relevant and visible on people’s timelines.?

They’re big on launches, from posts on Product Hunt to campaigns on social media. A particularly successful X campaign involved announcing a new ‘notable’ customer (eg. Perplexity) to their timeline and tagging them in the post, every day, for five days. Once tagged, these customers would re-post, which spread the word and gave Loops visibility and easy social proof.

What doesn’t Loops do well??

They aren’t leveraging SEO. They seem to be using their “guides” page as their blog. However, the majority of content created seems to be for current customers instead of new user acquisition. As a result, they appear nowhere near the top of the SERPs for general broad-match keyphrases like “email platform” or “email marketing platform” or more specific long-tail niche keyphrases like “email marketing platform for SaaS” or “SaaS email marketing platform.” The site has decent domain authority which means it could rank quickly for lower competitive keywords. A great step here would be to focus on bottom of the funnel (pain point recognize and solution searching) search terms with decent volume and build out strong topic clusters.

AI integration: Loops could use AI tools to help users analyze their email data, identify patterns, trends, and correlations, and allow them to group their audiences based on interests, behaviors, and preferences.

Key takeaways

• Tackle common consumer issues, head-on, and create content or tools that can help them with these issues?

• Be as open and as honest as you can with things like pricing and insights into your business, it will go a long way to help build up trust?

• Consider using AI tools that collect and analyze data and provide insights to users to help them optimize their performance

• Post regularly on social media as it will keep you relevant, at the top of people’s feeds, and at the top of people’s minds.?

• Look through your customer database and get approval to post and tag them on social media channels to spread the word and give users social proof.?

• Although focusing on content that adds value is a good acquisition and retention strategy, it’s still worth adding relevant search intent content to your blog to drive new user acquisition from the SERPs.?

What campaign or content marketing strategy would you like to see torn apart, next? Let me know!?

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